Review articles

2017年的亮点之一是我们自己的一位咨询编辑史蒂夫·波沃斯基（Steve Povoski）撰写的评论：‘A comprehensive overview on the surgical management of secondary lymphedema of the upper and lower extremities related to prior oncologic therapies’。包括手术，化学疗法或放射治疗在内的肿瘤疗法可能导致继发性淋巴水肿，这是癌症患者长期发病的主要因素。淋巴结于“组织间间间室内富含蛋白质的细胞外液体的集合，这是由于淋巴产生和淋巴传递到全身循环的失衡而引起的。

Oncologic therapies for Gynaecologic, urologic cancers, melanoma and lymphoma are mostly associated with lymphedema of the lower extremities, those for breast cancer with the upper extremities. This is a side effect which is currently being addressed by both surgical and non-surgical techniques. Further research aims to find solutions for lymphedema which is understood to affect 90 million people worldwide from a variety of causes.

特定基因参与癌症

Testis specific Y-like 5: gene expression, methylation and implications for drug sensitivity in prostate carcinoma于2月份出版，描述了睾丸特异性Y样5（Tspyl5），一种属于核小体组装蛋白家族的推定肿瘤抑制基因。该基因位于8q22.1，尽管其在前列腺癌疾病中的确切作用尚未完全定义。该研究研究了TSPYL5的基因表达和甲基化水平。

“该基因在肿瘤组织中的甲基化与其mRNA和蛋白质表达成反比。”作者提出，由于其基因产物的肿瘤量减少，因此该基因可能是更晚期前列腺癌的指标Gleason Scores.

Immunotherapy

To be able to use the immune system for treatment and cure of disease is a dream of many physicians. In December, the authors ofExpitope 2.0: a tool to assess immunotherapeutic antigens for their potential cross-reactivity against naturally expressed proteins in human tissuespublished a new and improved version of their tool, which aims to help immunotherapy develop. This web tool provides prediction of cross reactivity of T cell epitopes, ‘based on experimental protein abundance and expression data obtained from a growing number of publicly available databases.’ SeeTable 1 included here.

弗里什曼（Frishman）组显示出对介绍肽的交叉反应性的变化似乎取决于不同的健康状况。癌症患者的交叉反应性比身体健康的人高约5倍。提出的肽与自我抗原的相似性是“对生物体本身和免疫疗法的消除疾病的障碍。”

New compounds

The paper byDyshlovoy等。很好地说明了涵盖的主题的多样性BMC癌。Urothelial cancers are hard to treat but these authors discovered that‘The marine triterpene glycoside frondoside A induces p53-independent apoptosis and inhibits autophagy in urothelial carcinoma cells’. The compound frondoside A (FrA), isolated from the sea cucumber Cucumaria frondosa induces apoptosis without the need for active caspases and p53; inhibits pro-survival autophagy; and demonstrates increased activity when used in combination with classical cytotoxic agents.

Biomarker development

The final article included here has been very popular. Having an Altmetric attention score of 425, ‘钙钙蛋白素作为间皮瘤的血液生物标志物was published in May 2017. The authors used a case-control design to ask their specific questions regarding the usefulness of calretinin as a biomarker for malignant mesothelioma (MM) which is a deadly cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. They concluded that calretinin has a similar performance in detecting MM (except the sarcomoid subtype) as Mesothelin, the gold standard. They propose that Calretinin be added to a panel of biomarkers with mesothelin for validation of these markers in a prospective cohort study. The hopes would be that a panel of biomarkers would be developed and used in surveillance programmes of workers with former exposure to asbestos.

Call for papers

我们很高兴地宣布BMC Cancer和BMC Biotechnologyhave launched a cross-journal thematic series. TheCall for papers引入嵌合抗原受体（CAR）T细胞疗法，在血液学恶性肿瘤中已经很重要，并希望成为诊所的标准疗法。该系列的标题为“肿瘤学诊所内的汽车免疫疗法的进步”，并接受提交的意见，直到2018年6月底。三位来宾编辑是：Marko Radic教授，Djordje Atanackovic和Tim Luetkens。